


such stuff as dreams are made on

by sifuamelia



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura & Lance (Voltron) are Cousins, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Allura (Voltron), Desert Island Fic, Established Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Feelings Realization, Happy Ending, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Siblings, King Shiro (Voltron), Magic-Users, Mild Language, Multi, One-Sided Allura/Lotor (Voltron), POV Alternating, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Past Character Death, Prince Keith (Voltron), References to Shakespeare, Sassy Pidge | Katie Holt, Shipwrecks, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Stranded, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuamelia/pseuds/sifuamelia
Summary: A fateful storm. A hidden island. A magic unlike any other.





	1. Chapter 1

At the tender age of five years-old, Matthew Holt diagnosed himself with astraphobia. Upon reporting the news to his mother, though, she’d merely laughed. “All children are scared of lightning, Matt,” she’d told him, ruffling what peeked of her son’s unruly mop of mousey hair out from under the thick comforter that he’d drawn up and over his head in fright. “Don’t worry. You’ll grow out of it someday.”

And now, nearly twenty years later, he figures that she must have been right. He’d never been fearful of lightning — blazing, brilliant, sparking behind his eyelids like a firework’s fingerprint long after it’s subsided and given way to the following thunder — itself. He’d just been scared of what came after that burst of bright, bright light—

“Matt!” Somebody’s hollering his name, over the wind and the rain and the _everything_ that the sea seems so keen at throwing at the ship, to and fro and to again, slapping up against its groaning hull like a hoard of very angry hands. But the tropical storm screaming its way through the ozone-charged atmosphere, unleashed from the gaping maw of the dark, _dark_ sky cast omnipotently overhead, isn’t what’s fazing him.

“Matthew!” He hears his name again, nearly torn apart by the roll of thunder overhead. “Matt, where—!”

“Over here, Dad!” he hollers back. “Over here!”

Even in the midst of the washed-out world bearing down upon him, upon the ship, Matt can make out the tracks of rainwater sluicing their way across his father’s graying face, his bright yellow rain gear doing absolutely nothing to protect him from the unusually extreme elements.

Samuel Holt has commanded these southern seas for as long as his son can remember, and then, even longer than that. The grizzled captain, with his sea salt beard and eyes flashing like a lighthouse’s beacon, is a face well-known and well-loved within the king’s court. And yet—

“Navigation equipment,” Sam barks gruffly. “The instruments, everything — it’s all gone kaput.”

To Matt’s overworked ears, the snap of his father’s fingers echoes across the main deck, sloshing over with waves and wetness, and then outward, out and over the roaring ocean below their imperiled feet. The sound itself seems to be some kind of prophetic underscore, a final seal on their sorry fates.

“The ship, though?” he shouts, forcefully determined despite it all. “Can we save her?”

“She’s taken on water,” Sam replies. “But she’s still afloat.”

“Better than nothing,” Matt mutters. “I’ll see what I can do in the control room—“

“—and I’ll go find our Katie,” Sam finishes.

Matt swallows, _hard_. He’d nearly forgotten his younger sister — of all of the journeys that he and their father had charted course for the _S.S. Voltron_ , this _had_ to be the one that she’d fitted and spitted her way onto, demanding until the cows came home that they finally give in and bring her aboard.

 _Murphy’s law,_ he thinks sourly, shaking his head emphatically as he tightly grasps Sam’s forearm, then dashes aft-ward. He tries (but fails) to ignore the feeling that the gesture was some kind of good-bye—

He runs straight into something very, _very_ solid — a broad chest belonging to none other than the king himself. Takashi of the dynastic Shirogane family, with his mop of hair gone prematurely gray and a right arm built from the purest metals that the country’s quarries have to offer. All the result of some kind of personal trauma, Matt had heard, in hushed whispers flitting like fat summer bugs about the empty graces of the court that he ruled over.

“Your Majesty!” he exclaims, foregoing any semblance of deferential manners (he’ll apologize profusely for it later, of course — later, when they aren’t about to die) as he tugs on the hem of the king’s fine (and now waterlogged) coat. “Please, I’m begging you, get back, below!”

“Where’s your father, boy?” Sir Lotor’s knifelike face swims into Matt’s blurred vision, as sickly pale as ever in the close darkness. His sharp visage isn’t the only thing that Matt finds unpleasant about him — as one of Altea’s more prominent landlords, Lotor _does_ possess some degree of power within the royal court. But as Sam has shown him throughout their years at sea, Matt is firm in his belief that the measure of a man isn’t found in the way that he acts around his equals, but in the way that he treats his inferiors.

“He’s busy,” he replies coolly (as coolly as one who’s on the brink of drowning is able to manage… so perhaps not so coolly at all). “He’s doing his job, best he can. We all are.”

“No need for rudeness,” Lady Acxa says, much more coolly, but with a hint of warning. Another one of the king’s landlords, and closely tied to Lotor, from what Matt can tell. “The king deserves to know how we fare against the hurricane.“

“You being above decks isn’t helping us one bit,” Matt retorts, making note of the silent king’s widened eyes, but deciding that that apology should be saved for later, too. “You might as well side with this tempest, for all your troubles!”

“Boy—!“ Lotor starts to spit, his strange yellowed eyes flashing.

“You seem to be a demanding sort of fellow,” Matt interrupts, voice snapping. “Why don’t you leave us crew members alone and focus your _energies_ on nagging the storm into submission—”

“ _Enough_ ,” the king calls out suddenly. He rubs his hand — the one made of flesh — down the side of his square jaw. A tired gesture… but Matt would be damned if that isn’t an amused sort of glimmer lighting up the hollows of the man’s dark eyes. “We’ll get below, and we’ll leave you to your work.”

“Many thanks, Your Majesty,” Matt breathes. “We’ll be sure to alert you of any, uh… _significant_ troubles.” _Such as certain death,_ is the unspoken qualifier.

A quick nod. “As you were, Mr. Holt.” And then the royal trio disappears, back down into the hull where they belong.

Matt closes his eyes against the roar of the storm, and for a suspended moment, he pretends that he’s back at home, on land, with the Altean Sea at his back and Bae Bae nipping happily at his heels, a summer sunset spreading over the sand and the water and everything in between—

He opens his eyes, and he gets back to work.

 

* * *

 

“Not _you_ again,” Hunk mutters as he gets down on his calloused hands and aching knees to gauge the engine pressure. The bellowing machines appear to be just as unhappy as he currently is — their numbers are practically off of the charts, unlike anything that he’s ever seen before. The maritime academy _definitely_ didn’t prepare him for a situation such as this one, and that doesn’t bode well for _anybody_ aboard the _Voltron_ … himself included.

“Mr. Garrett,” the woman — Acxa, he remembers, _Lady_ Acxa — begins, her tone as imperious as ever.

“I don’t have time for this!” the ship’s head engineer shouts — in what he thinks to be her general direction, although the absolute chaos of the engines room has blunted his senses — over the swell of his beefy shoulder. As if to validate his growing sense of desperation, the gauge’s fine glass casing splinters. A hairline crack, but one that essentially manifests their impending doom.

He springs to his feet, head whipping every which way in search of a spare roll of his trusty cure-all — duct tape. “Go bother somebody else, why don’tcha!” he practically hisses at her, all niceties sacrificed to the roar in his ears.

“I’ve already tried that,” the young landlord says flatly. She then proceeds to hand him the roll that he’d been so frantically searching for. “So I figured it’d be best to come down here and help you instead.”

Hunk heaves a worn-out sigh, tearing off a jagged piece of tape and slapping it atop the casing. Not his neatest handiwork, but it’ll do. “Well, uh. Thanks. I guess.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “Don’t mention it.” But then she tilts her head toward the ladder leading from the boiler room upward, her choppily-cut blue-black hair dragging across her sallow cheeks as she asks, “By the way, are there any lifeboats aboard this thing?”

Hunk scrubs vigorously at his sweating forehead with the hem of his bright orange bandana. It’s coated in what’s probably at least a few months’ worth of grime, bodily or otherwise, but it’s his all-time favorite kerchief. Lucky, even — a memento of the vacation home that he’d taken with Shay, just a week or so prior to the (now fateful) day that he went out to sea.

At the thought of his wife and their extended family, Acxa’s question weighs just as heavily on his heart as it does on his mind. A powerful wave rolling below their feet sends him tumbling back against the main boiler, its overworked heat against his tired spine hardly registering within him. “Even a lifeboat wouldn’t do a person much good, what with these extreme conditions,” he admits.

Acxa sighs, and for the very first time since they’ve been aboard together, Hunk sees the burn of her yellowed eyes begin to die. “Never thought it’d end like this,” he hears her say, but just barely, over the spit and steam of the aggrieved engines.

For the very first time (and possibly, the very last), Hunk finds himself agreeing with her.

 

* * *

 

“This _was_ your doing, wasn’t it.”

It isn’t a question, and Lance can’t blame her for it. “We-ell,” he hedges, pushing his windswept hair behind his ears as he takes in the tempest howling below them. He could _really_ use a haircut, he thinks.

From her perch atop a large rock, right at his sandaled feet, Allura sniffs. Whether out of a righteous sense of anger or a genuine tug at the heartstrings, he can’t quite tell. “I’ve never seen a sky so violent,” she mumbles.

“It _is_ hurricane season,” Lance observes nonchalantly, leaning on his staff as he does so. The palm wood is slender but strong, well-worn grooves where his right hand always grasps it. And, dangling from its half-moon topper, a glowing gem the size of his fist, suspended in an ever-shifting sphere of ocean water.

“Don’t blame the weather, Lance.“

“I’m only saying, it’s that time of year, so—“

“You’re better than this,” she practically hisses. _Righteous anger_ , he determines. “You’re _better_ —“

“You’re right,” he interrupts flatly, “I am. I always was, and I will be once again. When we return to Altea, and I take back what’s rightfully mine.” Her eyes, the color of a shallow sea, flash almost as brightly as the lightning overhead, and he hastily adds, “And _yours_ , of course. It’s all rightfully yours, too.”

Allura rests her chin atop her arms, which she’s tangled in turn atop her bony brown knees. Folded in on herself like this, with her starlit hair draped around her thin shoulders like a shroud, she looks younger than she usually does. “This so-called birthright of ours… Do you _truly_ believe it’s worth the lives of all those men and women?”

“Water magic belongs to _our_ families,” Lance replies promptly. “Not to that mournful king, nor his silent brother, nor his petty lords. To us, and _only_ us.”

“The ocean wouldn’t choose a tyrant as its own,” Allura argues, glaring up at him. The thin golden circlet around her forehead is embedded with a turquoise-colored gem, just like his own. Water magic. _Theirs._

“‘Tyrant,’ huh?” She tears her gaze away, and so with it, his conscience crumbles. “Allura, they’re… That ship, everybody aboard it, they’re going to be just fine. I swear it.”

She lifts her head, and he’s more than surprised to see that her eyes are sparking with frustrated tears. Allura’s never been much of a crier, no matter how much it would be expected of her. A life marred by tragedy, and not even a few months past twenty years. Lance, too, would know a thing or two about loss — they aren’t exactly here by choice. Here, at sea.

Here, all alone.

“I’m no killer,” he reminds her softly.

She swallows. “I… I know that,” she says, almost guiltily.

He sits down next to her, atop the rock, atop the cliffside, atop the wind and the rain and the thunder and the lightning, all swirling below themin discordant harmony. He wonders, then, if the storm one casts reflects the insides of the caster… and then he decides that it’s probably best that he stop wondering.

“Do you remember?” he hears himself asking, as if from far, far away.

“Remember what?”

He licks his lips — they’ve gone awfully dry against the storm’s rough breezes. “ _Anything_ , I guess,” he elaborates after a stilted pause.

“I…” Allura grimaces. Folds back in on herself. “It’s like… It’s like it’s growing farther and farther away. Every day, each morning when I wake up…” She sighs. “I remember my father. Not his face, exactly… But I remember him.”

“He looked a lot like you,” Lance reminds her, made eager by his intact memories. “So did Melenor.”

“We could’ve been sisters,” she tries to joke.

“She wasn’t _that_ vain, was she?” Lance chuckles.

“I don’t remember,” Allura replies, abruptly. And just like that, their smiles fade.

“ _Lotor’s_ vanity was what got us here,” he says bitterly. “His ambition. His _selfishness_ —“

“Lance—!”

“He betrayed us, our families, _everything_!” Lance shouts into the wind.

The sea is surging — and then, with an angry _WHOOSH!_ , a monumental column of saltwater shoots into the black sky above. So close, he can nearly feel it graze the sharp tip of his long nose. And for a moment, he can see himself reflected in the water — bony fists clenched, brown face pinched, eyes glowing turquoise blue—

He gasps, and it all disappears, and he falls back to his knees. The world shakes along with him… but he can sense Allura’s gentle hands cupping his shoulders, without hesitation, without blame.

“You might not want to hear this,” she says after some time, “but our parents… You and I both know, they went too far.”

“You side with Lotor, then?” Lance snaps harshly. He can feel Allura flinch, but she doesn’t pull away.

“They turned their backs on our people for the magic,” she says, even quieter. “They flew too close to the sun.”

Lance draws in a deep, _deep_ breath. _With wings made of wax, he melted. And then, the boy fell from the sky, and into the unforgiving sea below._

“He cost us _everything_.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound so broken, but it does.

“We have each other,” Allura points out. And he almost laughs — not at her statement, but at the way that she says it.

“We do have that,” he agrees.

The storm rages on below them, but Lance feels calmer, somehow. He pokes at the dirt at their feet with his staff, absentmindedly drawing a circle, and then, a set of waves within it. He’s so focused on laying down the bumpy lines of the crudely-drawn rune that he almost misses her saying—

“The king. Where do you think he fits, in all this mess?”

He pauses in his drawing. “Takashi Shirogane? Man’s the one who sentenced us to our deaths in the first place.” He remembers _that_ much.

“But _Lotor_ —“ she begins to protest.

“Lotor was the arrow, but Shirogane was the bow.” The rune at his bare feet shimmers, then dissolves into a tiny puddle.

“Then who put us out to sea?” she wonders. “Who put us in the boat, the one that brought us here, to Arus?”

Lance stops poking at his little puddle. “Fair question,” he murmurs. “Your father, maybe?”

Allura shakes her head, her starlit hair brushing his arm. “That… That doesn’t make sense, though...”

“La-ance! Allu-ra!” They look at each other, then back a ways up the cliffside. From the shack, Coran is waving at them, his red whiskers the only bright thing about the otherwise gray backdrop. “Lunchtime!” their keeper shouts.

As they stand, Allura squeezes his shoulder. A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. “Why the storm, then?” she asks him curiously. “Tired of the sunshine?”

He shrugs. “Just… had to get it out of my system, I guess,” he says vaguely. And as they walk the rocky path together, back toward their home, the storm behind them appears to subside.

 

* * *

 

Within the shattered hold of the _S.S. Voltron_ , Keith Kogane wakes up with a start… and a mouthful of sand.


	2. Chapter 2

“What… What is this place?” Keith stares up the sheer cliffside, wide-eyed wonderment naked on his unusually open face. “I’ve never seen anything like it…”

Shiro watches his brother spin on his heel, just like that, and something inside of his chest tightens — with such curiosity gracing his sharp features, Keith suddenly looks a few decades younger. Twenty like he is, instead of forty that he’s not. “You and me both, kid,” he says, as evenly as he can manage, all things considered.

All things considered, like, the fact that they’re _definitely_ stranded. Alive... but stranded. There’s absolutely _no_ way that the _Voltron_ has remained seaworthy through that tempest — even Shiro, who knows very little about boats, can tell that much. That gaping hole on the port side in particular can’t be a good thing, not at all — even _he_ can diagnose it as a pretty pertinent problem.

On all sides, he can hear voices rising, just as the ocean had swelled around them the night before. At least, he _thinks_ that that was yesterday. Or maybe it was only a few hours previous? No matter what, though, the sun is shining now, so bright and brilliant that he can feel it on his face, through his skin, deep in his bones. He wishes that he could just lay back on the strange beach and close his eyes, if only for a moment, and perceive nothing but those beaming rays on his face.

Too bad that Lotor is so busy arguing with pretty much anybody that makes eye contact with him.

Shiro sighs heavily, mulishly stabbing his sword into the rocky sand at his feet. If only he could take Keith by the arm and rush him around the bend, up the cliffside, and into the endless blue sky spread above them. They could leave everybody else behind, leave everything else behind. Altea. The crown. All of the misfortune that it’s brought them and their family—

“Your Majesty.”

He doesn’t even need to turn around — he’d know that voice anywhere. Crisply accented, but slippery, somehow, as if a steel-scaled snake winds tirelessly below it. A snake, clever but conniving, with strange yellow eyes and—

“I know this place.”

Shiro whirls around. “Really?” he asks, too startled to mask his surprise. “How?”

“It’s… It’s a long story,” Lotor mutters, and although the other man’s answer is unhelpfully vague, Shiro gets the feeling that he’s telling the truth. He’s always had a hard time feeling comfortable around Lotor, what with his father’s cruel legacy, forever a black stain on the Kingdom of Altea. But sons aren’t their fathers, and so, Shiro’s determined to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now, anyway.

“Do you know its name?” he inquires, deciding to save his more pressing questions for later.

“Arus,” Lotor replies. “This place is called Arus.”

“Just a few dozen sea miles north of the Daibazaalian Peninsula,” comes a new voice, and even with his waning vision (he might as well admit it — he could really use some glasses, and sooner rather than later), Shiro can recognize Captain Samuel Holt from afar. That loud yellow raincoat would mark him anywhere. “Your father’s country, wasn’t it… my lord?”

Lotor’s chin tilts, whether out of shame or defiance, Shiro can’t quite tell. Knowing Lotor (or, knowing him as well as a person possibly could), Shiro would assume the latter. “Yes. Yes, it was.”

Daibazaal — the Black Land. Back when Shiro’s father had ruled Altea, his most trusted landlord — Zarkon the Mighty — led a small but powerful military coup against the kingdom’s central government. In retribution, Akira burned Daibazaal to the ground… and with it, his oldest son’s faith and trust in him. Because if it hadn’t been for the civil war, Adam would still be—

“Hey, anybody know where Keith’s going?”

Shiro stares at the meaty fist of Hunk Garrett. And then he follows the engineer’s pointed gesture… and then he sees his brother, slowly but purposefully scaling the rugged cliffside. And then he curses, right there, in front of his entire court and the _Voltron_ ’s crew.

“You want me to go get him?” Acxa asks. She sounds rather bored, and Shiro doesn’t love the way that she uses her wicked-looking purple knife to pick at her nail beds.

“No,” he replies, almost darkly, clenching the hilt of his sword with his remaining hand. “I’ll go—“

“Your Majesty,” Lotor interrupts. “It may be dangerous up there—“

“I’ll go after ’im,” Hunk volunteers suddenly. Shiro quirks an eyebrow, surprised — he knows that the young engineer is highly intelligent, but he’s never taken him to be the particularly courageous type. And of all of the things that could possibly wait for them at the top, the cliffside itself appears to be no easy feat to conquer.

“You sure?” he asks eventually. “My brother can be… _difficult_.”

“I can send Matt along as well,” Captain Holt offers, scratching at his whiskered chin. "He's certainly got the strength necessary for such a climb.“

“Or Pi — I mean, Katie,” Hunk counters. “I think… I think they’ve become friends. He listens to her.”

Shiro blinks. He didn’t know that Keith had friends — Keith's never had much in the way of friends. “Well—“

“Katie’s too young,” Holt says dismissively. “She wouldn’t be good for—“

“Wouldn’t be good for _what_ , exactly?” the girl in question pipes up. Shiro nearly falls over in surprise at the sight of her, seemingly appearing out of nowhere at waist-height among the otherwise burly group of men. If it wasn’t for her small stature and more youthful features, she could’ve been Matt’s twin — same fluffy honey-blond hair, same large hazel eyes.

Hunk looks between daughter and father, and then he says, “Wanna help me go after Keith?”

“Hells _yeah_ I wanna—“ Sam coughs loudly, and Katie winces. “I mean. Yes. Let us sally forth to retrieve His Royal Highness, Prince Keith Kogane, of the Most Noble House of Shirogane.”

Shiro can’t help it — he laughs, long and loud. “He doesn’t like all those fancy titles very much. Just ‘Keith’ will do.”

The girl leans in and serves him an actual wink, and a conspiratorial one at that. “So I’ve learned,” she says.

 

* * *

 

Keith’s been a climber since before he was large enough to do it, but things like size have never stopped him. And besides, he’s grown significantly since his childhood! He’s tall, and he’s mighty, and he’s—

Oh, who's he kidding. He’s still kind of short, especially for a Shirogane. But he’s quick, and he’s scrappy, and he’s light on his feet. His older brother can’t say _that_ much for himself.

The cliffside is built of some kind of gray stone, weathered and worn, but with some pretty decent footholds all about. It isn’t unlike his usual path back home — out of his bedroom's wide window, down the side of the fat turret, and onto the somewhat slippery slate of the main roof — what with all of those irregular but sturdy segments of the brickwork there to prevent him from falling off of the side of the royal castle (and other little things like that). But a few of his steps here and now are blanketed with slippery moss, so he doesn’t tread lightly.

Still, his thoughts wander to what exactly could be waiting for him at the top. He’s never seen a beach like this before, all rough and rocky. The waves look darker, here, too. Taller. More powerful. Nothing like the more temperate climes of Altea, where the seas are so clear that even at some of their deepest points, a person can see all of the way to the sandy bottom.

He stops, then, breaths coming shallowly. Altea. Not at all his place of birth (Shiro’s mother, the late queen, had always done a bang-up job of reminding him of that), but still, his home. Will he ever see it again?

He rolls his shoulders, and he resumes his climbing. Because there’s no use in thinking backward when an entire world lays ahead.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, Lance can feel it before Coran even says it: “A stranger approaches.”

He abandons his book immediately, leaping up from the sofa with a start. Allura, who’d been dozing on his shoulder, falls back into the sagging cushions with a surprised _oomph_! “How?“ is all that he can manage to choke out.

“He’s close,” Coran warns, his mustache twitching. Their guardian spirit’s eyes have gone glowing blue, and Lance knows that he’s scanning the grassy landscape beyond the stone walls of their little shack, attempting to scope out the mystery intruder before they can actually intrude.

“Altean,” Lance murmurs, clutching his staff just a little bit tighter.

“A-Altean?” Allura yawns from behind them. “How — How c-can you know s-such a thing?”

“The ship from last night,” he explains, almost absentmindedly, as he peers through the warped glass of the shack’s sole window. Nothing lies beyond it but his own reflection — they don’t exactly keep it for the cliffside views. “It was an Altean craft. I could… I could feel it.”

Allura grabs at his shoulder. “The one you tried to _sink_ ,” she says, and he can hear the anger rising in her, like the swell of a cresting wave.

“‘Tried to’ being the operative phrase here—“ he attempts at placating.

“Lance,” she hisses, biting and spitting his name like it’s an apple gone rotten.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, okay?” he returns, shrugging her off with a perhaps unnecessary amount of force. “Nobody’s hurt.“

“You don’t know that!” she retorts. “Not for certain!”

“I do, I can sense it in, like, the patterns of the waves and—”

“Children!” Coran practically shouts, and it reverberates throughout the cabin’s old, warped bones. His eyes have faded, but his bushy whiskers are still rather aggravated, tangled by a wind that doesn’t quite exist on the island’s plane. “He _is_ an Altean—”

“Knew it,” Lance says smugly.

“—but also… something _else_.” The spirit’s thin lips pinch at their corners as he backs away from the windowsill. It’s enough to kill Lance’s smugness on sight — Coran doesn’t scare easily. So then—

“What?” Lance asks, now feeling rather apprehensive. “What else could an Altean possibly be?”

Allura gives him a measured look. “ _You’re_ one to talk, Lance McClain. You walk around carrying a ten thousand year-old magical staff like it’s a casual walking stick.”

He begins to splutter, but Coran abruptly interrupts him. “You shouldn’t engage,” their guardian voices firmly. “He’ll be… _unpredictable_.”

“What — What’s _that_ supposed to mean—!“

“His magic,” Coran elaborates. “He possesses strange magic.”

Lance’s shoulders sag, and he blows out a breath that he didn’t know that he’d been holding. Many Alteans can use _some_ form of magic, although very, _very_ few possess  _true_ magical abilities, the kind that come from within instead of performed without. And even then, even fewer hold powers as strong as the ones that Lance and Allura’s families had passed down to them.

“‘Strange’ like, he can shape-shift, but only into a hippopotamus?" he asks. "Or manipulate size, but only that of objects too sharp to safely handle in the first place?”

Coran shakes his head, clearly unappreciative of the boy's sarcasm. “No,” he murmurs. “ _Far_ stranger...“

Somebody knocks at the door, then, three raps of quick succession, and they all freeze in their places. Lance can feel Allura’s eyes on him, Coran’s eyes on him — but he only has eyes for the door.

“Lance!” Allura whispers harshly. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, _don't_ —”

“It’s okay,” he whispers back, and with a ridiculous little two-fingered salute as a poor attempt at bravado. “I’ve got a ten thousand year-old magical staff for a casual walking stick.”

“Lance—!”

He takes one last deep breath, unlatches the front door, and—


	3. Chapter 3

It's a boy at the door.

Or maybe, a man. He has a youthful sort of face, unlined, and Keith wonders if it really is true, that fresh sea breezes save the skin of a person, unlike the smog and soot that a city dweller must brush off their shoulders each morning on their way to work.

The boy (or man) has brown skin, and that makes him a southerner. The eastern capital is the ancestral home of people who look like Shiro, like their father, with ink-dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. Of the gene pool lottery, Keith won the hair... but not the eyes. His eyes are so deeply black that they look purple in certain lights, or, under more unlucky circumstances, yellowed. More like Lotor and Acxa than his own family.

 _Half-breed,_ he hears Shiro's mother hiss in his ear.

Keith pauses, suddenly realizing — why would he so automatically consider this stranger a southerner? He certainly isn't Altean — he's clearly living on top of this pile of rocks, if the shack that he's just stepped out of is any indicator.  _So then why does he seem so familiar—?_

"Stay back!" the boy shouts. His voice has a lilt to it. Southern accent. And so, the plot thickens.

Keith can only stare. He follows the trail of blue — blue staff, glowing with blue light. Blue to match the boy's eyes.

"Stay back!" he repeats, the warning  _very_ clear in those eyes.

Naturally, Keith takes a few steps forward. It's like he can't help himself — it's like those eyes are like magnets. And no matter what the boy shouts at him, they're pulling him in anyway.

"Leave us alone, and I'll do the same for you!"

Another few steps.

"Last warning—!"

"You've got magic," Keith says. Rather dumbly, too. Not his finest entrance.

The stranger seems to agree — one of his skinny eyebrows quirks just so. Unimpressed. "What tipped you off?" he deadpans.

"So..." Keith gestures vaguely. "So beautiful..."

Now the boy is staring back, and Keith has suddenly acquired many, _many_ regrets. But he still can't help himself — the blue light, the color of the clear seas of home, is absolutely _radiant_. And the way that it seems to dance across that brown face, like sunlight through the surface of summer waters...

"Who are you?" the boy asks.

 _Gods_ , does Keith want to leave this place behind. This godforsaken rocky outcropping, this unfortunately gorgeous stranger, and everything else that he's seen and heard in the past day (or two, or five — he really has no idea how much time has passed since he woke up on the beach below, it could be years and years and he wouldn't know any better). The urge is sudden and strong, powerful, gut-wrenching.

But he tells him anyway: "I'm Keith."

The boy's nose wrinkles. Combined with that quirked eyebrow, he now appears to be just as uncomfortable as Keith is. "That's an unusual name."

Keith shrugs. "Take it up with my mother."

"You're Altean, aren't you." Not a question.

He shrugs again.

"But something else..." The boy takes his own step forward, almost as if he, too, is being drawn in by some kind of unknown force.

That's enough to make Keith take a step back. If this stranger is Altean, he'll know of Daibazaal. And if he finds out that Keith has Daibazaalian blood... Well. People don't like the Daibazaalians very much (or, at least, what's left of them). No matter what Shiro's mother used to hiss in his ear, though, the head knight of Shiro's kingsguard has always spoken of Keith's own mother favorably. Too bad that she only left Keith his name and a very sharp knife.

"Where's the rest of your company?" A new voice — Keith nearly draws said knife, shocked by the sudden appearance of another person. It's a girl (or woman, who the hell knows, really), southern looks about her as well, save her hair, which is as glimmeringly white as starlight. Her accent is more proper than the boy's, but no more regal. Now that he's gotten a good enough look, he can see that they both carry themselves like Shiro's lords.

"My... company?"

"Your boat. The passengers, the sailors, all of them... Where are they?" she asks, almost demanding.

Keith looks at the staff, and he can feel the magic practically radiating off of it, almost in waves. "I... I don't know," he says. And it isn't a lie.

Still, he'd paused, and the boy's eyes narrow fractionally. But it's the girl who speaks: "Did they survive the storm?" Her tone has shifted — it almost sounds as if she's pleading with him.

 _That_ , he knows for certain. "Yes."

The girl blows out an audible sigh of relief. "Good to know." She takes him in, then, just as he'd taken her. "You look hungry."

"Thirsty, mostly," he suddenly realizes.

"We've got lots of teas," she says, businesslike. "Do you like tea?"

"Y-Yes, I... I like tea."

The girl claps her hands, and then she's reaching for his forearm, and then she's practically dragging him by his sleeve into the house/shack/thing. "Splendid. I'm Allura, by the way. Allura d'Oriande."

"Keith," he repeats. "Keith Kogane."

"This is my cousin, Lance McClain. He's clearly forgotten his manners, so I beg your pardon on his behalf."

"N-No problem," Keith murmurs. Lance. That isn't a very common name, either, he thinks.

As they push past Lance, Keith can feel the brisk sea breezes ruffle at the hair at the nape of his neck. And then, for a moment, it's as if every single vein running through his system courses like it's touched a live wire, crackling with some kind of discomforting electricity. Like another storm is coming his way, bearing down on him and only him, absolutely inescapable.

He can feel Lance's gaze boring holes into the back of his head as he quietly shuts the door behind them.

 

* * *

 

"So _now_ the weather's clear," Sam mutters, shading his face from the sun with the flat of one of his wrinkled palms. "Bah."

Matt stands beside his father — although the man's pacing is serving to unsettle his preexisting nerves even further, he'll do literally _anything_ to avoid the company of Lotor. "Have you ever seen a storm like that before, Dad?"

"I've seen my fair share of storms," Sam muses. "But that was a right tempest, I'll tell you that. Wonder what I've done to piss off the gods to deserve _that_ one..."

"Perhaps not what  _you've_ done," Matt says, skeptically eyeing the grouping of lords, still huddling close to the washed-up wreck of their ship. Only the king stands apart, gazing up the cliffside with the air of a man who's at war with himself.

Sam catches on almost immediately. "Not Shirogane, though," he says, almost emphatically. "He's a good man."

"His father—"

"Sons aren't their fathers," Sam interrupts. He reaches out to ruffle at his eldest's hair — Matt ducks just in time. "You're more like your mother than anything. _Katie's_ the one who's had the vast misfortune of inheriting my impulsive streak."

"You think she's doing alright up there?" Matt asks.

"She's got the Garrett boy with her," Sam replies with a surprising amount of confidence. "I watched him train back at the naval academy. I think I trust him more than myself to keep her safe."

And Matt has to believe in his father, because that's what he's always done.

 

* * *

 

"Just north of Daibazaal," Shiro says to Kolivan. "So close to home..."

"And yet, so far," the head of his kingsguard finishes gruffly. His dark eyes dart about the cliffs, searching for something that Shiro knows isn't just Keith's safe return. The kingsguard is sworn to protect the prince, too, but in this moment, Kolivan's looking for another kind of trouble.

"I'm never going to a wedding again," Shiro mutters. This earns him a rare chuckle from the grizzled knight.

"It wouldn't be wise to offend neighboring royals," he admonishes mildly. "No matter the ensuing mortal peril of the journey home."

"Did  _you_ know it was hurricane season?"

"I didn't know hurricanes travel this far north in the first place." Kolivan's massive hand, scarred and thumbless, twitches atop the wrapped handle of his dual dao, one of his curved blades hidden by the other.

"Do you think—" Shiro coughs awkwardly. "Ah. N-Never mind."

Kolivan just looks at him. He suddenly feels as if he's under a microscope, but he can't bring himself to say it. Because magic's just a fairy tale, and Kolivan doesn't seem like the type to believe in such a thing.

Still, he wonders. The war wrought such havoc that it's a common belief that it drained the magic from Altea, but Shiro knows in his heart that it began to flee far before the apocalyptic devastation. The sudden expulsion of the Oriande families had been a significant blow to the magic's favor — Adam had told him as much.

Adam, who'd had water magic, and went into hiding for it. Adam, whom Shiro still loves... even though he's been gone for nearly five years now.

"Are... Are you alright, Your Majesty?" he hears Kolivan asking. Just as gruff as always, but somewhat hesitant, too.

"Am I ever?" Shiro asks wanly, before he can stop himself.

Kolivan, bless his heart, has absolutely nothing to say to  _that_ one.

 

* * *

 

"You've brought us here for a reason," Acxa says once they're alone. Not an accusation, just an observation. She's never been one to accuse. It's mighty good for Lotor's self-esteem.

He examines the map that he's kept otherwise hidden from the rest of the crew. No use in revealing his little secrets, not now. "My father was Daibazaalian."

"Yup," she affirms, popping the  _p_.

Lotor's sharp chin twists with a frown. "My mother wasn't."

 _Now_ he's piqued her interest, although she's careful to measure it. A proper courtier if he's ever seen one. "Good for you?"

"She came from an Arusian bloodline. Mixed in with a few other things — Altean, of course, and even some Oriandean — but nonetheless..."

"...Arus."

"I've always wanted to see this godforsaken rock for myself," he explains, almost cheerfully. "This seemed like a good opportunity." He rolls the (strangely dry) map up in a snappy fashion. And from the glint in his yellowed eyes and his tuneless hum, Acxa can tell that this is only the beginning.

She sighs, examining her nails. She's never really liked magic. Or weddings, for that matter. So right now, she's kind of wishing that she'd had the insight to sit this one out.

 

* * *

 

Coran's just putting on the tea kettle when a name that he'd almost forgotten flashes like a bolt of lightning to the forefront of his mind.

"Haggar," he whispers, then promptly drops the strange new boy's cup of ginger peach to the kitchen's floor.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been feeling a bit out of touch with VLD lately (hence me dragging my feet with basically all of my longer fics), but I recently saw "Richard III" at the park in my city, and I knew that I had to write a Shakespeare-inspired fic! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


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